Saturday, January 11, 2014

Oh look at the colors...

This is one of those mash up blogs so sit back and wait for the wrap up at the bottom. Or just skip ahead and read only that if that's your way...

So yesterday I was talking to C and he was telling me about a class he is taking this semester. It's a fluff class basically. The assignment for Friday was to bring in an object that could be a self portrait. One guy brought in a slice of pizza, he's part of the whole but still an individual. There are lots of components but together it's just pizza, man...and of course the instructor loved it. C brought in a complicated Yu-Gi-Oh! card. It's verbose when it could be simpler but sometimes the complexity of language can hide insecurities...oh this is brilliant stuff! And of course it's all bullshit. He's really good at it. And as he told me what he brought in and the explanation I had to say that at times like that I'm not sure if I'm ashamed or proud. Because I taught him that. So it's all about the tone...oh...I taught you that....or Hey! I taught you that!

I think being able to present to an instructor what they are looking for is a brilliant life skill. The class is a (as he so eloquently put it) class that you can only describe by making the jack off hand motion. He has actual really hard classes he needs to get through this term. If you can do the fluff and buff class without breaking a sweat then that's good. And if you can do it with the right amount of faked sincerity that your instructor thinks you are brilliant then so much the better. It's a life skill that transfers in to numerous other occasions. Especially for the social introvert. I don't want to be out with a group but at times my career has called for it and at times Brent's has. So on those occasions I just slide in to the mode of presenting what is the right thing for that group. And then later write a blog about the inner dialog that went on the whole time I was listening to the fascinating story of Nero the dogs deworming...

Okay shift....

Yesterday I was coloring a mandala. I have a book of patterns and what I had been doing was making a copy of the design and then coloring it. I decided that I probably was spending more on ink in the copying than I would just buying a new book every once in awhile so yesterday I just colored the main book design. And as I colored it I picked a color I thought would work well and it didn't. Well crap. I had a theme of colors in my head and this one just didn't fit. So now the options were to move on to a new pattern or make this one work. So I made it work. It's just a picture after all. What's the worst thing that could happen? I didn't like it at the end? Big deal.

So I shifted my color palate choices and kept going. And when it was finished I liked what I ended up with.

Can you tell which color didn't belong?

So then I started to think about mandalas and life. Coloring a mandala can be a meditation. Coloring at all can be, but mandalas are used for that purpose quite often. Heck, there is even an introduction at the beginning of my book of patterns talking about what they are and how to approach coloring them. Which sort of made me laugh the first time I read it, it's a coloring book for goodness sake, instructions? Really? But it's true. I started this mandala thinking about the ocean and the beach and looking for a little bit of beach soothing feel. Then that bright purple, which looked more muted on the pencil, hit the picture and I had to shift. To make it work out I couldn't use just blues and grays, I needed to add some more purples and some rose tones. Though I still stuck with the gold for the sand and was pleased at the end...

Which is really what life is right? That's why mandalas work as a meditation. Life is about patterns. And about making things work when you "mess up" and still be able to weave those mistakes in to the pattern of your life and end up with something that you are pleased with. Heck sometimes the mistakes are what makes your life beautiful.

And tie it all together now...

After reading the first part of the blog about C and his fluff class and then reading the second part where I waxed poetic about mandalas did you think I was bullshitting you? Because I really wasn't. That is exactly what I thought about when that bright purple hit the picture. The first thought was SHIT! Now I've wrecked it. And OF COURSE it was when I decided just to straight up do it in the book. And then within a few seconds I was already on to making it work. Because it's my picture and I can make it work. Or not. And as I colored I really did think about how it's like life. Because coloring really is a nice meditation prompt. And I don't do blank mind meditation. I do deep thoughts with Jack Handey meditations. And this is why I don't do drugs. I don't need them.

So yeah, he learned it from watching me, all right? Not just the ability to give an instructor what they are looking for but the fluff and nonsense vocabulary to go with it. Because I'm both of those things. I'm a mandala coloring bullshit artist who thinks logic and reason have their place but so do rainbows and unicorns. I'm really like a piece of pizza you know...a little doughy, a little saucy and completely cheesy....